American Revolution, Essay Example

The heart of the cause of the American Revolution in the late 1770s was a disjuncture between how the British viewed the American colonies and how the colonists saw themselves. Americans saw themselves as equal citizens but the British thought the colony should be used in whatever way possible to benefit the crown. There were several significant events and ideas that spurred the Revolution’s start in 1776.

First, the ideas of the European Enlightenment inspired the colonists. They were interested in social contract theory and limited government. The theory of “natural rights” which said that all men had a right to overthrow their government when necessary was key to Revolutionary ideology. Many of the famous phrases we know from the Declaration of Independence and Constitution represent the ideas of John Locke, Rousseau and Hobbes.

Second, while the colonists had been in charge of their own organization for a long time, the French-Indian War left Britain in a lot of debt and they turned to colonial taxation to increase revenue. The first of these were the Sugar and Currency Acts which increased tax on sugar and banned the production of American currency. These acts were followed by the quartering of soldiers which mandated that soldiers could be housed and fed in any residence without warning or compensation. By far the most famous tax was the Tea Tax in 1773 which resulted in the Boston Tea Party, a protest by the colonists in which they threw tea overboard harbored ships. Eventually the First and Second Continental Congresses were established to organize boycotts against imported goods.

Several acts of violence by the British also fueled colonial discontent. Eight colonists and 70 British soldiers were killed in the seizure of colonist gunpowder at Lexington and Concord in 1775. Later that year the Battle of Bunker Hill was a triumph for American soldiers and marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War.